


Something Borrowed

by CrabOfDoom



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Alternate Timeline, Episode Ignis Spoilers, M/M, Other, brief mention of wild game innards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 12:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13031151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: A year out from the invasion of Insomnia, something old may well be stronger than everything new.





	Something Borrowed

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the alternate timeline in CH3V2 of Episode Ignis, this is a branch-off as well, of past events in the Breath After Breath collection. Specifically, in Even Now, and the first two-thirds of Salt In the Rainbow. This may not be very clear, without them.  
> (title changed from Sixpence)

The steadily waning amount of sunlight in recent days made sleeping a rather timeless event. The Meldacio outpost's ever-present flood lights, to illuminate the recesses within the stone hill's carved and eroded voids amplified that effect a great deal. Hunters learned quickly to sleep without darkness, wherever and whenever. It was simply a fact of life.

Safay had spent most of his life sleeping in the pitch black of windowless bunk rooms in Zegnautus Keep, in transport cargo holds lit only by small emergency strips, on roofs and plains and mountains away from electricity and underneath Eos' black, starry skies. The deeper the darkness, the deeper his rest. It had only seemed fitting, if pointedly irritating, that having to bed in much brighter conditions for the past year had left him a much lighter sleeper.

Acquiring a truck of his own had helped a great deal. A standard issue model among hunters, the welded metal frame in the truck's bed, behind the cab, had come with rolled canvas panels that turned the frame into a tent, for shelter in the field. Safay had taken to leaving the panels down whenever he was in base, and using the tent as his home. One large waterproof case, welded to the frame and bed's front wall, contained what little of a wardrobe he had. A second, his stock of elixirs and phoenix downs. He drew his sword from the aether, and had no weapons to secure. He bought his food whenever he needed it.

Strung between the frame's four posts was another stretch of canvas that served as a nearly square hammock. Safay's calves and feet hung over the edge, no matter how he slept, but it was enough. The tent panels didn't block out the floodlights, but diffused them enough for the former soldier's sleep to reach depths that could ignore the sounds as other hunters called back and forth, and slammed the doors on their own vehicles.

Whatever the time may have been, this was not one of those deep-enough occasions. A bigger commotion than the usual daily bustling was going on by the outpost entrance. Days hardly mattered past 'tomorrow' for Safay's work, and so he kept neither calendar nor timepiece, but it was likely time for a change of personnel. Half the hunters would be returning to Lestallum for a week with their families, while the same numbers would be coming back to the outpost, to resume their duties. Safay had been told that it was found to be the best arrangement for efficiency and morale.

The soldier had no family to return to, in Lestallum nor anywhere else. He didn't really care what the others did and would've preferred to be left out of knowing. The personnel changes were just an annoyance.

Today's was particularly hellbent on ensuring that he wasn't going to be able to ignore it.

A large foot clad in a thick boot planted itself on the outside of Safay's truckbed with a complete lack of subtlety, and shook the entire vehicle as a physical alarm clock.

"Sefa," the foot's owner called from outside of the tent.

The soldier let his body go limp on his hammock and allowed himself to be jostled along with his truck, rather than respond.

"Up," the other hunter continued, nevertheless, and changed tactics by tugging a couple of times on Safay's dangling, booted ankle. "Special assignment."

At that, Safay growled openly. "No one here is my superior officer. I coordinate; I don't take orders. From anyone."

"Personnel and cargo heading back to Lestallum are packing up, as we speak," the hunter informed him. "Commanding officer wants to head out, ASAP. He's gonna need a lucky charm, at this hour. That's your cue. Get up. Get ready."

Safay groaned and pulled his hands down his face, at that news. He could hear the hunter walking away, but a 'lucky charm' mission meant that someone would be back for him, sooner or later. Daemons seemed to stay away from the motorcades, when Safay was along. Those that did approach, didn't swarm as quickly, and gave the hunters more time to take them down. The same phenomenon held true, during hunts.

All of the hunters had noticed the trend. Most of them didn't like it, and gave the soldier a side-eyed, wide berth, but it was agreed that Safay--or, rather, Sefa--was too useful an asset to expel. He didn't suppose that telling them that he was the test tube byproduct of daemon blood and a specter's genes, that the daemons outside the gates likely assumed that his presence meant that one of their own was already claiming the humans for its kill, would win any friends.

Alas, if cargo was involved, that meant a sizable quantity of the outpost's dried wild game meat was going to be on its way to Lestallum's marketplace, which meant a sizable chunk of the soldier's pay.

He yawned, long and petulantly, as he untied the shirtsleeves of his secondhand flightsuit from around his waist. Safay sat up, and shrugged his way back into them. It went unzipped above his navel, until a time when he'd be a little more alert. The outpost was used to it, and the Lucian hunters were often just as brazen.

Safay exited his tent and jumped down from his truck. A quick rifle through his supplies container made certain that a phoenix down was hidden in each boot shaft and the pouch on a broad, double-banded black leather belt that he clicked around his hips was refilled with potions and elixirs. A long stretch, his fingers interlaced and arms above his head, and Safay assessed that he was as ready on this short notice as he was going to be.

He could hear that Monica had come along with the refreshed round of hunters, off towards the gates, and was giving someone else a run-down of what the motorcade of four trucks would be carrying. The first and last would carry the majority of the hunters. The second, food supplies, and the third, raw minerals, meteor shards, and scavenged materials. Safay was usually in the middle, driving one of the supply trucks.

Monica's voice was still distant, at the front of the procession, and on its far side from Safay's view. Hunters were pulling themselves into their carriers, and blocking view of whoever she was briefing, even as Safay casually made his way around to see.

Behind a hunter who stood and made a last inspection of her rifle, this 'commanding officer' placed their right hand on their hip, and the high elbow of a tall figure, wrapped in white leather, band of gray around the bicep, became visible.

Safay's heart fell out of his chest.

The hunter finished and climbed aboard the truck. Several yards further back, the entirety of a floor-length white coat, with broad swath and high collar of black leather became visible.

Tears welled in Safay's eyes, began to roll down his cheeks, and there wasn't a single muscle he could move, to stop them.

He wasn't prepared to believe what he was seeing. So much could change in a year's time, but the hair he was seeing was clearly not blond. It was gray. Almost as much so as his own. That wasn't Ravus. Monica and the officer strolled closer as they spoke. The man's build was right. His height was right. But his face... It was so thin and chiseled. That _couldn't_ be Ravus.

The officer looked ahead of himself. The hunters had all boarded, and nothing but the longest two hundred feet in the world lay between the officer and the soldier too overcome to move.

The officer stared back. His lips moved; two syllables too soft and distant to hear.

The soldier didn't _dare_ believe. The pain of accepting and being wrong would be unbearable.

"Safay?" the officer called out.

No one in the outpost, no one in Lestallum knew that name. No one in over a year had spoken it. Not even the soldier, himself. How could this officer know?

"Safay, you're alive?!"

His voice was right. His hair was wrong. His face was wrong. _How could his voice be right?_

"... Ravus?" the soldier forced out from a cracking voice.

The officer took a step toward him, and every step after grew faster than the last. He was running. It wasn't a curious walk to confront an unwanted and inconvenient past, a threatening gait of dominance to serve as a warning to keep thing civil and distant. A literal prince among men was running back to what Niflheim's chancellor had regarded as discarded trash.

Those last words from Ardyn, the whole reason why Safay had never tried to find his lover, to speak with him directly, came blaring back to the forefront of Safay's mind. Before Ravus could reach him, Safay held out his arms and cast a barrier spell.

Ravus caught himself before a full-speed collision with the round shell of violet light, and landed against it by his palms. His face was a portrait of confusion and heartbreak. Particularly, when he peered through the light at the tightly constricted feline pupils of terrified eyes, and knew beyond a doubt that he had the right soldier.

"No, my gem," the prince pleaded. "Please, don't _you_ reject me, as well."

"I could never," Safay whispered, "but if I touch you now, I'll never be able to let you go again."

Ravus seemed to calm, although the longing in his eyes grew deeper.

"Then for the Astrals' sake, Safay, touch me."

"I can't," Safay answered. "I can't touch you, if I can't have you. I'll kill her, Ravus. I swear to the gods, I'll kill her, to make you mine."

"I am yours," Ravus stated softly. "I don't know what lies you've been told, my gem, but there is no 'her'. Nor 'he', nor 'they'. I've been yours, alone, since the Galdin coast."

" _Angel of the silver sea_ ," Ravus recited in a whisper, " _flesh of the winter moon; on summer's sand, your glory there lay my heart and soul to bare; in autumn's wane and in spring's air, my life is lived for thee_."

It was a poem Ravus had composed in their first days together, when they both were seventeen. He'd never written it down, but had spoken the words through so many nights that neither of them had ever needed it to be. There was no one else in all the world who could've known it.

The barrier spell faltered, and its rounded, hexagonal grid shattered silently to the pavement. Safay didn't move; Ravus took the initiative grasp the soldier's wrists, and pull Safay into a desperately tight embrace, with his magitek arm around Safay's back, and his right fingers sinking deep into thick French braid at the back of Safay's head.

With no way to protest the contact, Safay gave in and threw both arms around the back of Ravus' high collar, and buried his face between the collar's suede inner lining and Ravus' neck. His prince's hair may have gone gray, but it was still every bit as soft as Safay remembered. The ease of their similar heights, the broadness of Ravus' shoulders... truly, in the moment, it felt as though home had finally come back to him.

"We've so much to say, my love," Ravus sighed against the fine hairs behind Safay's ear. "So much."

The truckload of hunters above them were wide-eyed and silent throughout the whole ordeal, save for shooting one another an occasional incredulous glance. The cold-natured soldier, the disaster of people skills, the efficient killer who never shied away from being waist-deep in entrails to field dress a garula, was just pulled into the arms of the last living royal on the face of Eos.

Behind the pair that may as well have become one entity, Monica cleared her throat.

"Majesty?" she interrupted. "If I may, we have two trucks of hunters eager to go home, and families waiting for them."

"Of course," Ravus nodded, and with great effort, forced himself to loosen his grip on his lover. It was only two hours back to Lestallum, barring complications. Two hours, and then Ravus could hold his soldier for the next ten years.

Straightening, Safay looked at him, quizzically. " _Majesty?_ "

Ravus' smile was warm, yet apologetic.

"So much to say," he repeated. His touch hadn't completely left Safay's arms, when he turned to face the hunters' commander. "This soldier is the 'lucky charm' of whom you spoke?"

Monica's gaze flickered to Safay, and back. If a Nox Fleuret could tell, it might not be all superstition and coincidence, after all. "Well, yes."

"Of course, he would be," Ravus supposed, and allowed himself five seconds more for the first kiss either man had had since before Insomnia's fall. "I ride with the general."

Monica managed a nod, as Ravus crossed before the truck to reach the passenger's door.

"As you wish," she said, before turning her stunned gaze to the soldier. " _General?_ Just who the hell _are_ you?"

"Has it mattered?" Safay asked. He climbed into the truck's cab, fired up its engine, and the rest of the procession followed suit. A last minute for a final readiness check, and the four trucks were off into the darkness of the Cleigne highway.

\---------------


End file.
